Monthly Archives: April 2012

On Monday Waves sold it’s 15,000th copy during it’s Daily Deal on Steam. That’s not bad for a game that’s been out a little under 6 months and was made mostly by just one man.

So with 20k copies looking very far away indeed right now it seems like a good time for a look back at Waves to see what went right and what went wrong.

First up some statistics without any context:

Units sold to date: 15,238

Percentage sold direct: 3.7%

Percentage sold on Steam: 96.2%

Percentage sold in Steam bundles: 53%

Percentage sold during Daily Deal: 15%

Metacritic Score: 82

Steam Demo Downloads: 25,985

Steam Demo Conversion Rate: 6.8%

Average Time Played: 2 Hours 44 Minutes

Average Play Session: 22 Minutes

Percentage of Players who played more than 20 hours: 1%

Percentage of Players who reached the Score Cap: 0.4%

If you are a website looking for a story feel free to pick a headline out of those numbers although by now I don’t think there is anything that surprising about them as we all know that Steam is a pretty big deal these days.

As you can see the majority of sales have not been at the full asking price of $10. In fact the average price paid per unit is significantly south of that and I’m yet to reach the point where I have to pay Epic any royalties for my UDK license. In short I’m not rich but I’m not starving (I am however still living with my parents which helps even though it is embarrassing as a 30 year old man). Now on the assumption that the inevitable Summer and Winter Sales for this year bring in about half as much as the first Winter sale did I should be able to fund myself for the next year. Those same numbers however say that I won’t be able to afford to pay for lots of art or other content for my next game which sucks.

[singlepic id=61 w=700 h=525 float=]

Why Am I not Rich?

Everybody knows all indie developers that make it onto Steam are minted and have no money problems so why am I not sitting at a gold plated desk smoking money cigars while wearing a money hat (aside from my not smoking and looking daft in hats). Read on to find out why…